


life inside the music box ain't easy

by unwindmyself



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Autism, Character Study, Childhood, Family, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Precociousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-30 22:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19412908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: Jemma is different than the other kids, and not always in a good way.





	life inside the music box ain't easy

**Author's Note:**

> So maybe I'm the only one who came out of 6.06 with a lot of feelings about tiny Jemma's (and therefore larger Jemma's) mental health issues. More specifically, a lot of things that have been implicit, like her clinical anxiety, were all but canonized, and I'm having a lot of feelings about that. I'm also having feelings of a different sort about Fitz's characterization of her music box monster as her id, because it was clearly a manifestation of fears/anxieties/dark impulses/things she's repressed and what she's afraid of becoming if things were different. I mean, she was literally wearing the torn-up blouse Jemma was stuck in space in for six months and bedraggled traces of her space slave attire. That should have explained a lot of things. Honestly, I could write an academic essay about this episode, particularly wrt psychology.
> 
> But I also had a lot of feelings about Jemma's mental health issues because one of the reasons I've always seen them is that I have a lot (if not all) of the same issues. Up until this episode, I wondered if I was just projecting because I project a lot of stuff on fictional characters (but especially Jemma), but what really hit me was the way the music box was used. I never had any physical thing like that, but boy, was the idea of controlling my emotions in that way familiar.
> 
> Friends, this is a story about a precocious child having hella mental health issues. She's got anxiety (and although it hasn't manifested particularly, depression will tie in) and OCD and she's very, very autistic. This is also a story about her parents (mostly her father) not understanding and/or not wanting to deal with the reality of acknowledging and treating these mental health issues. Unfortunately, more than one thing he says is something I grew up hearing. I didn't get my anxiety/depression diagnoses till high school and my OCD and autism diagnoses till after college - and the latter of those wasn't even a full diagnosis so much as the medical equivalent of "well, I guess, sort of" because I present atypically and am a girl and etc. And long before and also after said diagnoses, or the former two at least because I never bothered sharing the latter with him, my dad... well, he behaved a lot like this. 
> 
> This isn't a particularly happy piece, sorry to say. But it's exploratory. It's a lot of me working through some of my own issues, but it's also genuinely just a way to put together a lot of the pieces of Jemma that canon has given. (Non-judgementally. Because I'll be the first to admit I'm not at all a romantic FitzSimmons person, but wow, the way he dealt with her mental health issues was unacceptable.)
> 
> And some of the stuff about her family is from the comics. Some of it I just invented. (Did I name her sister after Amy Acker in _Dollhouse_? Maybe.)

Every day when they’re sitting around the dinner table, Jemma’s mum asks about three things: what did she learn today (lots, always, though usually from reading and exploring on her own more than from the teachers), does she feel alright (she’s small and more than that her back is shaped funny, she was born that way, and if she’s not careful she’ll hurt herself), and did she make any friends (other, Mum means, than the teachers and the classroom fish).

(Oh, but the fish! There’s an aquarium to the left of the classroom, and Jemma is enthralled by it. She sits near it whenever possible, puts her mat near it at naptime-quiet time, studies it during every free moment. She knows every fish, their genus and species and colors and size and the cutesy alliterative names she’s given them because _she_ wouldn’t like being addressed as “pre-adolescent female” or “homo sapien.” She draws them, tracks them, makes notes about them, feeds them when she’s not being asked to let the other children get a turn, reads every vaguely fish-related book she can find. The fish are her _favorite_.)

Her dad doesn’t care all that much about her lessons or the aquarium, which Jemma supposes makes sense because he’d have already heard about those things from her siblings even though Claire and Gilbert starting school _was_ two decades ago, almost. And mums are meant to be better listeners than dads, anyway. That’s how it is in a lot of stories.

He _does_ seem to care a lot about her making friends. That she hasn’t done yet upsets him in the sad/disappointed/frowning way, which is better than the loud/flushed/angry way at least. He thinks she’s lonely, and he doesn’t believe her when she says she’s not.

So she makes up her mind to do better at friendship. It must be important if her dad thinks so, he’s the smartest and most important person she knows.

She approaches some of the girls on Monday morning with a big family-photo grin plastered on her face. “Hello,” she says, holding out her hand like she sees her parents do when they meet new people. “I’m Jemma.”

One of the girls (blond hair, green eyes) looks at her oddly. “The fish girl,” she says.

Jemma blinks. “I like fish,” she says, in sort of a _yes, of course_ way because this isn’t a secret. “Do you like fish too? They’re fascinating! And so beautiful.”

Another girl (black hair, blue eyes) says, “If you like fish so much, why don’t you marry them?”

As insults go, it’s a weak one - Jemma has heard the way her brother and sister go after each other, and maybe it’s just because they’re grown but those insults usually involve a lot of swears - but it’s clearly meant to be cutting. Jemma doesn’t even _know_ these girls, so she doesn’t know why they’d already dislike her! She only said hello.

So she does the obvious thing and bursts into tears.

The girls all roll their eyes, which seems very sophisticated, and they all turn away from her in unison to make their point clear. So Jemma shouts, without really thinking, “Marrying a fish would be bestiality and that’s a crime!” And then she’s pulled away and given water and tissues by the teacher, which just proves her theory that grown-ups make better friends.

* * *

When she gets home and explains this to her parents, her dad tuts (intercourse, especially intercourse with animals who can’t consent, isn’t something she can discuss at school, and she should have been able to figure that out) and frets (if this was a test, Jemma knows she failed spectacularly, even though nobody told her what to study) and finishes by telling her, “Showing people you’re upset will just give them more reasons to pick on you.”

“Why were they picking on me at all?” she asks, pressing a pattern into the sofa cushion. “That isn’t kind.”

“Some children are afraid of people who are smarter than them,” her dad says, like this is supposed to be a consolation. “Some are just mean because they want to be, and sensitive people are easier targets. You don’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they got a reaction out of you, hm?”

Up till now, Jemma has sort of thought you were supposed to show what you’re feeling, but maybe it’s different at school than at home. So she nods and says, “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.”

He kisses her hair. “I believe in you.”

* * *

Usually it’s Dad that picks Jemma up from school, and if he can’t get her home right away she sits in his office. He works in a big corner suite in a tall building doing important management things for Roxxon, which is a corporation that deals with oil and gas and things that relate to that. But sometimes he’s out of town, or has an unavoidable meeting, and then it’s Mum who picks her up, and those days are Jemma’s favorite. Mum is a surgeon and she gives academic lectures, and that’s better than Dad’s meetings and blueprints and phone calls and general disdain by far.

Of course, Jemma’s usually in school herself during the lectures and she’s not allowed in the room during a surgery, that wouldn’t be safe _or_ sanitary, but she can sit in Mum’s office and do her homework or read or draw, and if she wants to she can go sit with the girls at the desk. (They call themselves “the girls,” even though one of them is a pretty South Asian boy named Imran. Jemma doesn’t ask about this, assuming it’s the sort of inside joke she’s too little for.) She likes them better than her dad’s coworkers, too: they don’t make her do maths on command or tease her for her uniform being too big. Sometimes they even let her help out. She’s too little to answer the phones, but as long as she doesn’t look inside them, she gets to alphabetize the files that have been pulled and put them in two boxes (one green for “go-backs” and the other orange for “on the calendar,” which was her idea and they listened and implemented it). Sometimes she gets to pick out which of the gift-shop flowers they put in their window. They even chipped in to buy her a pair of neon tetras (Nellie and Teresa) for her birthday!

One such day, she’s behind the desk sorting files when she sees Poppy and Ethan from a street over come into the lobby with a man that must be their father. They all look nervous, and Jemma isn’t trying to but she hears them check in.

Their mum, it seems, was in an accident where her car smashed into a tree. Jemma saw the paramedics bring in a woman who’d been dramatically injured, but she didn’t know it was Poppy and Ethan’s mum. Suddenly she feels awful: they must be so horrified, and what if her mum can’t save theirs? Will they hate her forever? She isn’t very close with Ethan, he’s nearly three years older than her and mostly likes sports, but she and Poppy get on. Poppy taught her how to play French hopscotch, where your squares swirl around like a snail. She doesn’t want Poppy to hate her forever.

“Hope it’s not true, what they thought,” says Stevie, who wears huge gold glasses and chews gum. She waits for Poppy and Ethan and their dad to be out of earshot, but Jemma’s still _in_ earshot, so she overhears. “That she did it on purpose.”

“Poor kids if she did,” sighs Imran, who also wears glasses but they’re much smaller and according to Jemma’s mum more stylish.

“Keep the kids in mind,” says Aoife, who’s got a Belfast accent and always has painted nails, and she glances Jemma’s way.

“Oh, bugger,” says Imran under his breath, and he gets out of his chair and goes over to Jemma. She’s sitting on the floor clutching at her own face, and it sounds like it worries him. “Sweetheart, let’s go in your mum’s office for a while.”

Jemma nods mutely and lets Imran lead her away to the quiet, closed-door office where Poppy and Ethan can’t see her and know she was part of their horrible day. There are interesting books and the radio is always turned to the classical station, and usually Jemma likes it here, but right now she’s worrying too much. Why would Poppy and Ethan’s mum hurt herself on purpose? Wreck her car on purpose? That doesn’t make any _sense_.

Imran clears his throat. “Do you want me to call your dad or your sister?”

Jemma shakes her head. She doesn’t want to be a bother.

“Can I get you anything?” he asks. “Juice? Biscuits?”

Jemma shakes her head again. Her lips form the word “no,” but no sound comes out. This doesn’t happen very often, but it has happened before, and she’s not really surprised.

“Alright,” Imran says doubtfully. “Let us know if you change your mind.”

Jemma nods. She’s already looking for a book to read, one that will distract her from these horrible possibilities.

* * *

Her parents have a row that night, while Jemma’s in the bath. Poppy and Ethan’s mum pulled through, for now at least, and it’s not clear whether or not it was a suicide attempt (this is how Jemma learns what “suicide” means) so that’s positive and it’s not as if Jemma saw anything or as if Poppy and Ethan saw _her_ , but she’s barely said two words all evening and her dad is upset.

“That’s clearly not a place for such a sensitive child,” he argues.

“She’s never had a problem with it before,” Mum says calmly. “She likes it, even. It was just seeing her friends there that startled her.”

“But it’s a local hospital. The odds she’ll…”

Here Jemma tunes them out. It’s not just seeing them there. It’s that she didn’t want to see them hurt, and she didn’t want her mum to not be able to help, and she didn’t like the thought of her friends’ mum possibly trying suicide because she doesn’t like the thought of her friends’ mum being sad because if her friends’ mum is that sad then what if her mum is ever that sad?

What if _she’s_ that sad someday?

“Besides,” her mum is saying when she picks it back up, “it’s not like there were a lot of other options, with you in meetings and Claire in class and Gil halfway across the world.”

“This,” her dad sighs, “is what I’d hoped we were done with.”

Maybe, Jemma thinks, he means that they should have been done with it because now Jemma’s got a few friends at school (all of them proper-aged for being in year four, so older enough that they treat her more like a science experiment or charity case or teacup pet than anything else). Maybe he means - and he wouldn’t have said this if he knew how thin the walls were and remembered that she can still hear him even though she’s not talking, so she shouldn’t take it personally - that they should have been done because they’re middle-aged people who hadn’t meant to have a third child. 

Remi from school with the two different colored eyes asked once about this: was she a mistake? She couldn’t answer it then, and she doesn’t want to answer it now.

* * *

Since she’s so many years ahead at school (by the time she gets to secondary school work, she only spends half the time with other students anyway, and the rest with tutors) she has to rely on the neighbor children for socialization (her word) and normal interaction (her parents’ words). She’s odd to them, and they aren’t shy about saying so, but they’ve all got quirks. Kieran has a stutter and plays the trombone (an inherently funny instrument, they all agree), Catriona is a ginger and she runs faster than anyone, Tamzin knows all the words to classic musicals and has juvenile myoclonic epilepsy that’s actually put her _behind_ a year in school (even though she’s very smart). Jemma is the kid genius with the crooked spine.

Usually when her parents send her out to play (she always has to be _sent_ ) she divides her time between flower-picking (or drawing) and observing the other kids, pretending to be Jane Goodall. Their behavior feels about as foreign-familiar to her as a chimp’s might, like she recognizes its root causes but can’t quite sort out why it manifests like it does.

She’s at this latter pursuit when Dillon, who’s got braces and always totes around a football in hopes of getting up a game, comes to sit beside her. He’s a year older than her, but she’s got a theory that he’s less cool among his schoolmates than he pretends to be in the neighborhood.

“Hey, nerd,” he says, smiling like he thinks it’ll prove he’s playing around. (It doesn’t. It puts her on her guard. That’s how bullies talk, she knows that from school even though most bullies leave her alone now for being too easy a mark.)

“Hi,” she says, crouching over her notebook protectively.

“What are you always scribbling in there?” he asks. It’s clear he didn’t understand that her body language meant “go away, it’s none of your business.” She’s not wonderful with body language either, but that should have been obvious! 

“Observations,” she says tersely, feeling her throat tighten up. If she doesn’t say anything daft, he can’t try to hurt her feelings. She won’t give him ammunition.

“What, like a spy,” he scoffs. “Girls can’t be spies.”

“I-I’m a scientist,” she stammers. “And, and, and -”

“And, and,” he mimics, making a face at her. “I didn’t know someone so smart could be so _stupid_.”

She squeaks indignantly. If she knows one thing about herself with absolute certainty, it’s that she’s the _opposite_ of stupid.

“If girls can’t be spies, what about Peggy Carter?” she gasps out. Peggy Carter is a hero of hers, a fellow Brit who made a name for herself in a field thought to be all for boys. Jemma would be a rubbish spy and she knows it, but science is disproportionately full of boys too and she appreciates the bravado it would take to succeed, especially back in the olden days when it was even worse. She wants to be half as courageous as Peggy Carter someday.

Dillon doesn’t seem to care, though, because he rolls his eyes (he doesn’t seem at all sophisticated doing that) and tries to snatch the notebook out of her hands. “Let’s see your great work, then,” he says.

“No!” she shouts, grabbing it tight and turning from him, starting to rock. “Not - yours -”

He puts a hand on her shoulder and pushes, and it doesn’t hurt her but she screams anyway, shrill and wordless and loud. Her brain feels like a radio that’s only picking up static.

“Oh, great,” sighs Bronwyn of the long black hair, who does modeling for local advertisements. “You broke the savant.” She pronounces it wrong, like “save-ant,” and Jemma can’t even correct her, she’s so upset.

“Oi!” exclaims a grown-up voice on the wind. It’s Jemma’s sister Claire, who doesn’t live home anymore but has come for dinner or possibly to borrow one of Mum’s neurology books for class (Jemma can’t remember). “Leave her alone, you little ninnies.”

The kids all scatter and Claire kneels down to look Jemma in the eye (or as close to it as Jemma can bring herself to allow). “Are you alright, Jems?” she asks softly.

Jemma opens her mouth to reply, to explain how Dillon was intrusive and rude and how he tried to read her private notes and how he teased her and touched her and made all the others laugh and gawk, but she can’t force the words out, she’s breathing too heavily.

Claire sighs, but like she’s angry at the other kids and not angry at Jemma. She picks Jemma up carefully and whispers into her hair, “You’ll be fine now. Let’s get inside.”

Sniffling, Jemma nods and grabs onto her sister’s blouse.

* * *

It turns out that Claire came for dinner _and_ books, and she stays to watch something on the telly, and she puts Jemma to bed and reads her a story (it’s not that Jemma can’t read the books herself, she’s been doing that for years, but she likes listening too, like it’s a radio play just for her) but when Jemma wakes gasping two hours into the night from another one of those awful dreams (dark rough walls, only a pinprick of light to be found, no warmth, no sounds, no companionship) she hears Claire and her parents arguing down the hall.

What would Peggy Carter do?

Jemma takes her covers and bundles up in them, then goes to put her ear to her door.

“She needs _help_ ,” Claire is saying.

“My daughter,” their dad shouts, as if to imply “ _my_ daughter, your sister,” as if it was a question, “is not a lunatic.”

“I didn’t say she was!” Claire exclaims. “But she’s not all perfect, either.”

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of a six-year-old,” he says. 

“I feel bad for her,” Claire retorts. “It’s like she lives in a totally different world than those kids, and she doesn’t know how to handle them. I mean, they’re a bunch of prats -”

“Claire!” That’s Mum.

“Well, they are,” Claire says. “That Dillon would have had her sobbing on the ground if he’d kept up.” She makes a disgusted noise and Jemma can picture her face exactly. “And she wouldn’t have been able to stop it. She can’t protect herself. She can’t protect her _heart_.”

“She’s smart,” Dad says dismissively. “She’ll figure out how to help herself.”

“I bet it’d be easier if you just took her to a psychiatrist, though,” Claire says. “Mum, there’s got to be a child shrink at the hospital, someone you could take Jems to who wouldn’t go turning her into ammunition against the local Mr. Roxxon himself.” 

This last bit is said with a _tone_ , the sort Jemma has gotten in trouble for using the couple times she’s dared. It surprises Jemma: Claire is so polite most of the time, at least toward their parents, but more than that, why would her seeing a doctor be shameful?

“Don’t you dare,” Dad accuses. ‘“If my daughter was ill, I’d get her care. I _do_ get her care.”

“Oh, yes, the sainted Kurt Simmons, bearing the weight of his baby daughter’s early-onset scoliosis so admirably,” Claire says, sounding unimpressed.

“At least scoliosis is a real condition and not pseudo-scientific rot invented to give spoiled, self-indulgent people something else to blame their problems on!” he roars.

“You really think your daughter is just pretending to have panic attacks because she thinks it’s fun?” Claire spits out.

Panic attacks. Is that what you call it when your heart starts beating in your ears and you choke on your words and things go sort of dark and everything is _too much_? When you feel caught in a nightmare but you’re wide awake?

“Jemma is being dramatic,” her dad says. “She’ll grow out of it.” He sounds final.

Apparently it’s not a panic attack, then. She’s just sensitive.

Nothing new there.

“I’m going,” Claire says, sounding defeated. “I’ll see you two later.” And she starts in the direction of Jemma’s room, which means that Jemma dashes back to bed and throws the covers back over her so she can pretend to be asleep.

Claire opens the door a moment later, and Jemma can _feel_ her staring. She lies very still, not wanting to let on that she heard the argument because she knows that would end poorly.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Claire whispers.

But making other people feel better is kind, so Jemma abandons her ruse, stares at her sister, and says, because it’s not untrue, “You didn’t wake me, I just had a bad dream.”

“Well, then I’m sorry about that,” Claire says, leaning to kiss Jemma’s forehead. She doesn’t sound convinced, but she’s not going to push. She never does with Jemma.

(Is this because of whatever is or isn’t off about Jemma’s brain?)

She tries for a brave smile. “I’ll be alright, promise. Love you.”

“Love you too, sis.”

* * *

So she doesn’t tell anyone what she heard. She doesn’t ask why Claire (who’s finishing her neuroscience doctorate and probably knows about these things) thinks that there’s something unwell in her head but why her dad won’t hear of it. But in the way these things sometimes do, it comes up anyway.

After an evening meeting maybe a week later, her dad comes home with a pretty wrapped parcel. It’s not her birthday, or a holiday, but that makes the surprise more exciting.

“Open it,” he prompts, setting it on the table in front of her and sitting down to watch.

She does, only a little clumsily.

It’s a pretty little music box, blue and patterned with tiny wildflowers (the generic ones, painted by someone who would say “I don’t know, flowers?” when asked the sort). When she opens the lid, a tiny ballerina in a white tutu twirls in front of the mirror.

(Jemma likes ballerinas. Not as much as fish or flowers, but a lot. She likes the idea of wearing a pretty costume and telling a story with your body. She likes how intense it seems. She can’t do ballet because of her spine and her complete lack of coordination, or figure skating either, but she likes watching.)

“Do you like it?” her dad asks.

Jemma nods eagerly. “It’s lovely,” she says. “But it’s not my birthday.”

“Can’t I just bring you nice things?” he laughs.

“Yes, but you usually have a reason,” Jemma points out. She doesn’t know what to do with his false-jolly moods, the ones where it’s like he’s doing a bad Father Christmas impression.

This also includes silly faces, like the one he’s currently making. “You’ve seemed down lately. I wanted to cheer you up.”

Jemma considers this. She doesn’t feel more “down” than usual, really; she still doesn’t have _that_ many friends at school, but she’s learning a lot and she’s happy about that, and her parents haven’t made her go play with the other neighbor children since Dillon was so mean. Maybe that incident is what her dad is talking about?

“Thank you,” she says, because it’s the easiest response. “I like the ballerina.”

“I thought you would,” he replies. “But this isn’t just a music box.”

“It’s not?” Jemma asks, eyes widening as she imagines an intricate puzzle hidden in the layers of flimsy wood.

“When you get sad, or someone upsets you, or you worry about something,” he begins, “you can put those bad thoughts inside the box.”

“How do I do that?” she asks, studying it. “Should I write them down? What if the box gets full?”

This clearly isn’t the response her dad wanted to hear. She can tell because his Father Christmas face goes away for a moment. “Could you just imagine writing them instead?” he asks. “Then you’ll save paper, too.”

Being kind to the environment is important to Jemma. This is another reason she doesn’t care for or about her dad’s job very much. She’s glad that he’s considered this.

“And then I’ll put the imaginary papers in the real box?”

He nods. “And then you shut the box tight so the bad thoughts can’t get to you,” he says. “Your ballerina will protect you.”

“Bérénice,” Jemma says immediately, having already decided. “She’s called Bérénice.”

“Bérénice will protect you,” her dad says, sounding slightly strained for reasons Jemma can’t quite put together. “And once the box is shut, you’ll be safe and you’ll feel better.”

She tilts her head, not sure that’s true, and like she does when she’s not sure she just says, “Hm.”

“You’re such a smart girl, Jemma,” he muses, smiling at her with his mouth but not his eyes. That’s worse than Father Christmas, it’s like he isn’t even trying. If she has to try, why doesn’t he have to? “Do you think you can just try to use the music box for me?”

She doesn’t want to disappoint him, so she nods.

“I believe in you,” he says. “You just have to use that brilliant brain of yours to deal with your feelings.”

“Hm,” she repeats, not sure what he’s suggesting.

“Only you can control how you feel,” he says, like it’s obvious. “You can stop being sad if you want to stop.”

“Oh,” Jemma says faintly. “Really?”

“Really,” her dad agrees. “If you don’t like a feeling, you can just put it in your music box and it’ll all be alright.”

He’s being sort of confusing, because you can’t hold a thought but you can hold the music box, and you think thoughts in your brain but the music box is a box and not her brain, but he wants to help. He’s trying to help. Claire was acting like he didn’t want to help, but he does.

“Alright,” she says. “I’ll try it.”

* * *

She takes the music box to her room after dinner and sets it on her bureau, and after her bath, once she’s in her pajamas and her parents have said good night, once all the lights are out but the glowing stars, she winds the box up and opens the lid and stares at the ballerina seriously.

“Hello, Bérénice,” she says. “I’m Jemma. You must be very strong. Not just because you’re a dancer, though I know that means you’re an athlete. I mean because you can push down bad thoughts and keep them in this box for me. You’re like a sentinel, protecting me from the dark.”

Bérénice doesn’t say anything, of course. She’s an inanimate object that Jemma is personifying, and thought experiment or no, that won’t change. But her tiny painted-on face looks serious, like she’s listening intently. 

“My sister thinks there’s something wrong with me,” she continues softly. The tinny music box song stops, so Jemma winds it up and starts it over to cover her voice. “My dad thinks I’m just sad and lonely. I’m not sure what’s true. I know that I don’t understand people nearly as well as I understand fish or flowers. I know that I like being alone when I’m doing things, but sometimes when I dream I dream about a kind of alone that’s cold and dark and empty and heavy and quiet, and that scares me. Sometimes I talk too much and sometimes I run out of words. I don’t like it when things aren’t in order. My spine curves incorrectly so I can’t do all of the things that other kids can. Sometimes they laugh at me, but it’s usually not because of my body, it’s because of how I act.” She gulps. “I think I was a mistake, sometimes. My brother and sister are adults already. I have to be extra-good to make me worth it.”

There’s a rustling down the hall, so Jemma meets her own eyes in the music box mirror. “Thank you for listening, Bérénice,” she says. “I’m going to leave my thoughts with you now and sleep. Good night.”

Dreams of frantic legions of ballerinas are better than dreams of dark empty nothing, anyway.


End file.
